Random House combines Ballantine, Bantam, and Dell imprints

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by starrigger

This is something too few people realize. Publishers are seen as fat and greedy, when in fact margins on most books are thin or nonexistent. Publishing isn't all blockbusters. But without the blockbusters generating revenue, a lot of other books would never get published.

And that's why a completely new model/publishing industry must emerge to work with the new media instead of against it struggling to maintain the status quo.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by starrigger

This is something too few people realize. Publishers are seen as fat and greedy, when in fact margins on most books are thin or nonexistent. Publishing isn't all blockbusters. But without the blockbusters generating revenue, a lot of other books would never get published.

Unless publishing is a large number of small diverse companies...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Unless publishing is a large number of small diverse companies...

Exactly. I think the age of the Mega-Publisher is over.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Right. Which is why the agency cartel's actions will reflect on all books sales...

You think most book buyers are even aware of that issue? I don't. Folks on MR tend to be better informed about such things because we have reason to take an interest, but we're a tiny fraction of the total book buying public.
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Dennis

[DawnFalcon]

When the books they expect jump 50% in price, or simply are not avaliable? Sure as heck they'll notice. They are not as dumb as big media expect, or you're treating them.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Exactly. I think the age of the Mega-Publisher is over.

I wish it were that simple.

The vision of a bunch of small independent specialty houses founders on some harsh realities.

Let's say I'm one of those indie publishers. Let's also forget ebooks for the moment, because the majority of the market is still paper books, sold over the counter in stores.

I'm publishing paper books, and attempting to make a living. The authors I publish are attempting to make a living (or at least, part of one) as well. To do that, I have to print, distribute, and sell a sufficient number of books.

The first issue I face is distribution. People can't buy my books if they aren't available in stores. (No, Amazon is not the answer.) How do I get my books to the retailer? A few years back, American Management Services went belly up. AMS had been distributor for a number of independent publishers. Perseus picked up some of them, but many went out of business. Small outfits tend to be undercapitalized, and they couldn't handle the interruption in their cash flow, or afford the "70 cents on the dollar" bankruptcy settlement. It cost us well regarded imprints like Carroll and Graf and Four Wall, Eight Windows. A number who still exist have dropped fiction from their lines.

A lot of the smaller independents may have deals with majors to handle such things. Baen Books, for example, is an independent, but they are manufactured, marketed, and distributed by Simon and Schuster. If S&S goes belly up, what happens to Baen? Nothing good...

Another issue I face is "selling enough copies". One advantage to being a mega publisher is that I don't succeed or fail based on the sales of any particular title. Many (in fact, most) titles I publish may do poorly. But on average, some will do well, and others will do very well indeed, and I'll make enough money to stay in business. If I'm an independent, a bad showing on the part of one book may put me under.

Yet another is the nature of the book retailing industry. Consolidation has been happening there even more than in publishing. The independent bookstore is a vanishing breed. The landscape is increasingly chains, like Borders, Waldenbooks, or Barnes and Noble, and they are under pressure from discount merchandisers like CostCo and Sam's Club. (And those folks sell an awful lot of books, and their buyers have enormous clout.)

I'm not selling most of my books to the customer. I'm not even selling them to individual bookstores who sell them to customers. I'm selling them to buyers at a corporate HQ who will make purchases for the entire chain. Who do you think is more likely to get those buyer's attention? The salesman for a mega-publisher touting releases by authors with a track record as best sellers, or me?

The mega publishers aren't going to go away, and I'll make a case that we don't want them to. The process that produced them was inevitable, and if a deity passed a miracle to order and they were all fragmented into a plethora of independents, the process would simply repeat, as smaller folks either went out of business or merged with others to become big enough to survive.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

When the books they expect jump 50% in price, or simply are not avaliable? Sure as heck they'll notice. They are not as dumb as big media expect, or you're treating them.

They may notice. Will they know why?

And I don't think they're dumb. Ignorance != stupidity. We take an interest in such things, but I don't assume everyone else does. In general, the stuff we know is the stuff important to us.

I simply don't assume the majority of the book buying public is as savvy about publishing as the folks here. Why should they be?

And if the books they expect become unavailable or jump 50% in price, well, you can't buy a book that isn't available, and if prices go up, you adjust your purchases to fit what you have to spend. That will happen regardless of whether you know what might be behind it.
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Dennis

[kennyc]

Dennis, I'm not saying it is going to be easy, but things definitely have to change. And it's not going to follow the traditional model as you've layed out in your argument. The dinosaurs no longer exist, soon the mega publishers won't exist either. Look at what has happened in the music industry. It will be similar.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Dennis, I'm not saying it is going to be easy, but things definitely have to change. And it's not going to follow the traditional model as you've layed out in your argument. The dinosaurs no longer exist, soon the mega publishers won't exist either. Look at what has happened in the music industry. It will be similar.

It can't be similar for the foreseeable future.

There are two factors: first, music is now digital. The music industry is attempting to come to grips with the fact that it can be easily copied and shared. In addition, the model for the artists is changing. It used to be that the album was the product, and a gig was something a band did to promote the current album. These days, I think that's reversing. I have an old friend who is the leader of a popular indie band. They've had a couple of major label releases, and a slew of indie CDs. He'd like you to buy the CDs, but if you rip them to MP3 and share them with your friends, fine by him. His band makes its living touring, and the more people who hear their music, the more who will pay to see them when they come to play.

Books are still mainly paper. Unless they get ebook editions, they can't be conveniently copied and shared (and the number of folks who read ebooks is still a small fraction of the market.) And the authors are relying on the sales of books to make money. They don't have the option of going on tour and playing gigs.

I don't see the mega publishers going away. They became mega publishers in the first place as part of an ongoing effort to survive. In any line of business, as the industry matures, size matters. The little guys probably can't compete.

The biggest issue the industry is wrestling with is imbalance in supply and demand. There are simply too many books chasing too few readers. Publishers have gone through waves of wrenching readjustments as they trimmed their lines, taking actions that arguably should have been done earlier but no one wanted to the the first. It will continue in one way or another until a balance is reached.

Another problem which is resulting in wrenching readjustments is the ownership structure of the industry. Many large houses were purchased by media conglomerates who had holdings in film, radio, TV, and music, and saw synergies from having all forms of content under one roof. It's falling apart because the synergies are elusive, and book publishing can't make as much money as other media. Conglomerates are unloading their publishing assets (witness Time Warner selling Warner Books to Hachette who relaunched it as Grand Central Publishing) because they can't make the returns on investment they require.

I wouldn't want to be an independent publisher at the moment. And I wouldn't want to be an author trying to make my living writing books unless I had a deal with a major house.
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Dennis

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

They may notice. Will they know why?

Probably not, but even if they did it won't change their reactions (buy less, buy paper or reach for the darknet).

And that's the important bit anyway.

Saying "oh people will conform" is amusing, but utterly unrealistic.

[kennyc]

<yawn> Sorry Dennis, you are stuck in the present. Yes books are currently published in paper but not for long. It is inevitable and unless the publishers realize this and change quickly new businesses will take there place. It's going to happen way faster than you seem to think.

The music business is in shambles at the moment, the publishing industry will be in another five years. It is already going down hill and has been since before TV took over as the primary home entertainment venue.

Not much time left.

P.S. You seem to be stuck in the Independent publisher vs the mega publisher mindset. That's not necessarily what I'm saying at all. The publishers are more likely to be replaced by something like Amazon than a bunch of ants.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Aside from agency pricing, expect to see a delay between the release of the hardcover edition and the release of the ebook for the same reason there is a year's delay between the release of the hardcover and the mass market paperback.

Well, one of the point was that with the agency model there would be no delay. Amazon got the option to keep it as before (non agency-model) but with a delay but I suppose they did not like that option.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Probably not, but even if they did it won't change their reactions (buy less, buy paper or reach for the darknet).

And that's the important bit anyway.

Agreed. And I was talking about books, period, not just ebooks.

Saying "oh people will conform" is amusing, but utterly unrealistic.

I don't recall saying that.
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Dennis

[Kali Yuga]

Ya know, I really don't see why consolidation is such a bad thing.

RH is increasing its efficiency and eliminating redundancies. Yes, it sucks for the individuals who will lose their jobs. But if their labor is unnecessary or duplicated, why keep that person on the payroll?

Originally Posted by kennyc

<yawn> Sorry Dennis, you are stuck in the present. Yes books are currently published in paper but not for long....

That depends on what you view as a "long" period of time.

It's unlikely that ebooks will hit 50% of the market for at least 5 years. For all the attention put on digital music, CD sales still constitute the majority of sales and a huge amount of revenues.

Originally Posted by kennyc

The music business is in shambles at the moment, the publishing industry will be in another five years. It is already going down hill and has been since before TV took over as the primary home entertainment venue.

It is, and I do think there are parallels, but there are also numerous differences.

The most critical difference is that the music industry was borne aloft for many years with consumers replacing vinyl and tape recordings with CD's. When music went digital, the ability to rip tracks largely eliminated that aspect of the format shift.

This will not happen for ebooks, since paper books are much more difficult to "rip" into a digital form. Even if someone puts out a $50 paper book scanner, it will still take hours to scan, OCR, edit and format a book. Ergo publishers may gain some sales from people replacing P with E -- or at least aren't likely to have that undercut sales.

Next, most music buyers were interested primarily in 1 or 2 songs rather than a full album. CD singles weren't very popular, and were a fairly expensive way to get those 1 or 2 tracks; so music buyers went from dropping $15 for a full CD, to $2 for the tracks they wanted. Since book readers want more than a handful of selected chapters, this will not be replicated with ebooks.

Third, musicians have the option to sell performance tickets and merchandise. Only a handful of authors can actually charge for a book signing, lecture or similar event. Some musicians can be sustained by other revenue streams related to their art; writers and publishers, however, cannot. Thus it will be vital for publishers and writers to maintain a similar schema as the current system (namely, "getting paid for content").

Originally Posted by kennyc

P.S. You seem to be stuck in the Independent publisher vs the mega publisher mindset. That's not necessarily what I'm saying at all. The publishers are more likely to be replaced by something like Amazon than a bunch of ants.

This is not particularly likely, for a few reasons.

• Retailers are not likely to want to absorb the costs offered by a traditional publisher, e.g. editing, marketing and so forth.
• Retailers tend to do best when acting relatively neutral towards their suppliers. E.g. if Amazon starts seriously pushing its own publishing house, the other publishers may get ticked off and punish Amazon in a variety of ways.
• If your retailer does take those roles, this may well lead to a conflict of interest. Not only would B&N be competing with its main vendors, but authors signed to B&N's publishing wing will start to demand equal time in terms of B&N pushing their products.
• Distribution is about more than just tossing your product up on the Web and hoping someone shows up. You need a variety of content -- or a specific niche with a brand identity, and modest goals to match -- as well as marketing resources to draw a decent audience in.
• Not enough has changed about the business to truly abolish the need for publishers, large or small. People enjoy blockbusters and they will always be around; even with books, managing a blockbuster requires significant resources and expertise. Books still need to be edited to be at their best; marketed to find, capture and maintain an audience. These type of requirements still demand more resources than most individuals can amass on their own, for example.

Last but not least, while it is entirely plausible that the book industry will look very different 20 years from now than today, or that today's players are enveloped, I fully expect that the overall makeup will be similar to the way it has been for a few decades: a few large consolidated powerhouses, a variety of smaller publishers and retailers, and a massive sea of unreadable texts in the slush piles. All that is happening now is that one specific aspect of the business (distribution) is falling in price, and the reality is that this is only a small portion of the total cost of publishing and selling a book.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by kennyc

<yawn> Sorry Dennis, you are stuck in the present. Yes books are currently published in paper but not for long. It is inevitable and unless the publishers realize this and change quickly new businesses will take there place. It's going to happen way faster than you seem to think.

Possible, but I doubt it. Billion dollar businesses don't wither and die all that quickly.

The music business is in shambles at the moment, the publishing industry will be in another five years. It is already going down hill and has been since before TV took over as the primary home entertainment venue.

Not much time left.

See my comments on the underlying difference between the two industries.

You're right about the effect of TV. The real competition is for the reader's discretionary time. Cost isn't the biggest factor. When the person in question could be watching TV, going to a movie, going out to dinner, or doing an assortment of other things, some of which will cost more than a book, why should they read?

And I think the effect you cite is a factor in "Too many books chasing too few readers". For a lot of folks, the answer to "Why should they read?" may reduce to "They won't."

P.S. You seem to be stuck in the Independent publisher vs the mega publisher mindset. That's not necessarily what I'm saying at all. The publishers are more likely to be replaced by something like Amazon than a bunch of ants.

It sounds like you are conflating the roles of publisher and retailer.

Let's assume the future you foresee comes to pass. What does it look like? Who publishes books? What form are they in? Who sells them? Who writes them? Is it possible for a writer to make a living as an author in the brave new world?
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Dennis